Blaze
by Nova Mirage
Summary: Blaze – (n.) a very large or fiercely burning fire, (v.) burn fiercely or brightly. 'And like all things that burned, she eventually burned out.'


Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or anything affiliated with it, and never will.

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Bright little Lucy, they'd say – no matter how old she was, she was always 'little'. She was eternally a child in everyone's eyes.

She was a burst of light in the lives of the heroes, an innocent child in a perverted, mad world. She was blind to the horrors and corruption that marred this earth, and in the eyes of people who were equally blind to its beauty, she was a treasure.

Little Lucy was their saving grace, the beacon of light to those lost souls.

She was a blaze.

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**Blaze (n.) - **_a very bright display of light or color_

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At the age of five, Little Lucy Weasley was enamored with the world; its vibrant colors and sounds mesmerized her. The wings of a butterfly enchanted her, and the rustle of leaves in the wind was music to her ears. Even the mundane things were magic to her.

And love… Love seemed the most amazing thing in the entire universe to her, its wonder not tarnished by hatred or jealousy in her views. She adored the idea of it because it was the only thing that she had ever come across to make people smile as much as she did. It was _her _light.

Little Lucy was perpetually trying to spread this love to everyone and everything, even at the oddest time.

That was why, one humid afternoon in August, her mother found her lying on her back out in the rain. She'd been there for only fifteen minutes and was already drenched, as the rain was no mere drizzle – it was pouring.

When asked what on earth she was doing, the five year old replied (her blazing orange hair that so perfectly fit her now dampened to the color of mud, her smile a rival to the sun) that the world was crying, so she'd come to comfort it. It just needs to be touched, she remarked with a loving grin, and no one else was there to do it. (They'd all gone indoors, just like every other time the sky showcased its melancholy.)

She was sick for the next two days from that stunt, though she didn't care. She was sure she'd made the world happier, entered its life as a sort of gaiety – a light of some sort – and made everything okay. That was what Little Lucy was good at, after all: spreading joy.

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**Blaze (n.) **- _a conspicuous display or outburst of something_

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Six years later, Little Lucy was taking her first step towards being an adult – not that anyone recognized it as that.

She was sitting on a very old stool, waiting for a very old hat to be put on her not-so-old head of ginger. Of course, like any other Weasley, she expected to be put in Gryffindor with her cousins and sister and… well, all of her family. Little Lucy hadn't even considered the possibility of anything else happening.

So when the Sorting Hat was placed on her head and instantly called out a-word-that-wasn't-Gryffindor, the young girl was shocked… along with every other person in the room. A Weasley who wasn't in good old Gryffindor?

There was a moment when she expected it to be a joke, some clever prank pulled by the ghost of her dead uncle – surely her blazing-orange-hair proved everything, right? – but there was nothing but silence.

After a few seconds of shock and frozen gazes, the Hufflepuff section clapped and cheered as heartily as ever, and Little Lucy numbly made her way over to the group of strangers, wondering why everything had to be so loud and big when she no longer felt like a Weasley. Her cousins felt like they were louder than anything else, too. Their silent, shocked stares were more deafening than the applause. They didn't even seem to know her at that moment.

Maybe that was why she wasn't in Gryffindor – she wasn't really a Weasley, and that was why she wasn't brave right now.

But she smiled anyways, the same old bright smile that never changed, and life went on.

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**Blaze (n.) **- _used in various expressions of anger, bewilderment, or surprise as a euphemism for "hell"_

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Through her years at Hogwarts, Little Lucy became accustomed to her position as a Hufflepuff. She made friends who were actually quite nice, she became a shining pupil… She didn't get to see her cousins a lot anymore – they were Gryffindors, of course – but at family gatherings nothing seemed different.

Sweet Little Lucy, the dear of the family, was just as sparkling and happy as before. Everyone agreed that she fit well with the badgers – with her friendliness and smile, how could she be anything else?

That was all they said about her, though. That she fit well in her House, that she didn't seem to have changed at all and was still like that little girl who would lie down in the rain because she thought the earth was lonely…

No one mentioned her grades, obviously, because they were slowly dropping as she daydreamed more and more in class.

She didn't really mind or notice until she messed up in Potions one day, adding just a hair too much of batwings, and – _BOOM_.

The Slytherin beside her yelled in surprise and was soon cutting into her with his cold eyes and sharp features. "What did you bloody _do_?!" he shrieked, his reddening face contrasting with the soot on him and his white-blond hair. "Go to blazes, you stupid Hufflepuff…"

It was right then that Little Lucy stopped daydreaming – permanently. Her light, or whatever it was she had been clinging to for the past years, blinked out in that explosion. (Had it ever been there at all?)

She wasn't in Gryffindor, she couldn't make potions… And judging by the look on the boy's face, she could no longer make people smile. She'd lost her special ability to be the colorful bright spot in others' lives. What was she good for, then?

What the haughty, indignant snake didn't realize was that he'd just opened the eyes of a girl still clinging to her innocence to the darkness of the world. He'd brought her into hell, although now she knew that she had been there the entire time.

Little Lucy was a child who had just woken up to a nightmare, to a never-ending night.

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**Blaze **– **(n.)** _a very large or fiercely burning fire,_** (v.)** _burn fiercely or brightly_

* * *

It was a Tuesday. A very certain Tuesday.

The day of her graduation from high school, the day she was really an adult.

And it was raining, the sky a pearly grey color, alight with a glum glow. Somehow, despite being a weather condition normally associated with darkness and slate clouds, it was bright, though not like the welcoming light of the sun.

Little Lucy didn't mind, though. The cool, damp ground felt nice against her back as droplets pelted her face, the beads of water even more plentiful than her freckles. It was quite the downpour, actually.

But the world was sad, and so was she.

For so long, her purpose had been to make others proud and glad to be alive. But since earlier that year, since her broken record performance of "sorry I'm so sorry I didn't mean to ruin the potion", she couldn't.

Little Lucy had been a blaze, burning so dazzlingly in the maelstrom of sins. She had been scintillating, glimmering, so very, very lively and vibrant. The girl-with-blazing-orange-hair had represented the best of the world for so many, because she became what she saw.

The same held true now, because the only thing that filled her vision was despair and all of the ugliness.

Her hair, her oh-so-lovely hair of flames, blended in with the mud now.

Oh, yes. Little Lucy Weasley had once been a brilliant display of everything you'd wanted in life. But her fire had been destructive; she had only been a blaze, after all.

And like all things that burned, she eventually burned out.


End file.
